Moon Stalked

by Aimee Easterling

  I was the naked one, but it was as if Jimmy English’s arrival had stripped his spouse of something far more valuable than mere clothes.

  No wonder she cringed, seeming to lose half her height in a second. The knife she’d been holding clattered to the floor.

  Scum is awfully good at taking advantage of opportunities. No wonder Jimmy dove past me, stretching for the weapon that would provide the upper hand he should have already possessed by virtue of his bulk.

  I couldn’t let him have it. Mrs. English needed the strength of success, not another beating by her husband.

  Jimmy’s upper lip curled into a sneer. And I took advantage of his posturing to slide my arm through the gap between his fingers and the weapon.

  Too bad my pelt had a mind of its own.

  Wolf teeth caught on Jimmy’s elbow, and he lashed out instinctively. I don’t think he even had time to choose a target. Just got lucky when his fist connected with my breast so hard I yelped.

  I expected the sound of my pain to send Mrs. English scurrying for cover. Instead, she appeared to have recovered her spine.

  Or so I guessed. My eyes were watering too hard to really see her. But I felt the jolt as she kicked her husband with the full force of years of pent-up aggression.

  “You bastard! You really think it’s okay to hit a woman young enough to be our daughter?”

  Her heel in his groin shook both of us. I rolled sideways away from the burly monster who’d crumpled into a pile of deflated testosterone at his wife’s furious feet.

  Mrs. English kept kicking while I leveraged myself upright. Headlights curved across the wall behind me...then stopped.

  The timeline had moved up faster than anticipated. Slim must have been out cruising—no wonder the answer to my call had been so prompt.

  I’d intended to chase Jimmy into the front yard in wolf form, leaving the capture to my partner. Teaming up with Bastion, the move would have been seamless. Even with a stranger for a partner, I should have been able to stick to the shadows and let Slim cuff our perp.

  After that, I would have shifted and called out instructions. Made myself known and ensured I landed my cut of the bounty.

  But now I was naked, in a lit room, watching a marital dispute that seemed destined to continue. Because with every kick, the wife appeared to be learning to inhale.

  I could steal some clothes, intervene and talk Mrs. English around until she was confused about my former nakedness. Stick to the plan. Refill the pack’s dwindling coffers.

  Or I could walk away and let this wronged wife complete her retribution. Slim would find them at his leisure. Jimmy would go back to jail, so the same end would be accomplished. I’d just fail to make my own contribution clear.

  “So much for cash,” I muttered, toeing the knife sideways so it wouldn’t end up part of the marital tussle. Justice would be pissed at the lack of cash flow, but I inhaled deeper than I had in hours. For the first time all day, the name “Honor” hung unwrinkled across my shoulders.

  Sliding past the raging wife, I shifted in the stairwell and wriggled out beneath the raised garage door. Then I waited in the shadows until Slim disentangled himself from his seatbelt and made his way upstairs.

  Chapter 3

  I slunk back to the fleabag motel where my pack camped, exhausted and craving my family. Halfway there, my head started pounding. The sensation was sharp, intense...then abruptly gone.

  I shook away transient pain and kept on running. By the time I made it to the foot of the stairs leading up to the motel landing, dawn was just beginning to gray the sky.

  The hour was either very late or very early, depending on your perspective. I didn’t expect anyone to have waited up for me. But as soon as I shivered out of my wolf body, the door swung open above my head.

  Darkness fled. Light cupped me. My twin stepped out onto the concrete landing and leaned down over the rail.

  Like Justice and Bastion, Grace and I were biologically identical...yet we’d never be mistaken for each other. Grace was well named, her body slender where mine was athletically curvy. Perfectly managed hair poured over her right shoulder in stark contrast to my endlessly tangled mop of curls.

  Until recently, we hadn’t spent more than a weekend of our adulthood together. Grace had focused on finishing up her undergraduate degree at RISD before landing a sought-after fashion-design internship. I’d been hunting criminals with Bastion while attempting to redeem my sins.

  No wonder we had very little to talk about.

  Now, though, Grace and I were united with one purpose. “How is he?” I asked, slipping past so I could peer around the door jamb. Justice was hunched over a computer in one corner. A dark lump on the opposite bed was smaller than it should have been.

  “Worse.” Grace breathed out through her nose, as frustrated as I was. We both watched as Bastion turned restlessly underneath heavy covers. It was high summer, yet our cousin could never seem to get warm.

  Then he moaned, and my feet carried me closer until I could lean over where he curled beneath the bedspread. Tomorrow, we would revamp our plan for finding Bastion’s pelt. We’d discuss avenues Justice might have found online while I was bounty hunting. Then the three of us would turn our strategy into fact.

  Tonight, all I could do was give my favorite cousin a little fleeting comfort. My pelt slid off my shoulders as if it was a living being. I shook out the skin to its full extent, let it drift down to cover Bastion like a shroud.

  No, not like a shroud. Like a blanket. A cocoon, both warm and healing.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then Bastion’s deep exhaustion bit into my bones.

  He wasn’t just worse; he was floundering. There was little of my cousin left inside this body. Just fever and emptiness leading to dark, endless sleep.

  His eyes had sunk into their sockets, his family resemblance to our dead parents during their last week of life starkly evident. Bastion was dying because of my mistake, just as Justice and Grace would decline if the thief started using their stolen pelts.

  No wonder the pair wanted nothing to do with me. Yet when my legs buckled, hands were there to catch me. Justice on one side, Grace on the other. Together, my family lowered me until I lay next to Bastion on the bed.

  A damp cloth materialized on my forehead. Someone’s fingers twined through mine. I barely felt the contact, so intense was the agony of virtual ice picks pounding into my skull.

  Beside me, Bastion stirred. Sat up. “You shouldn’t...” His hand was steady as it peeled the pelt off his chest and shoulders.

  As the fur lifted, pain eased within me. The two-day-old lines bracketing Bastion’s mouth tightened at the exact same moment.

  Either I bore the pain or he did. I was grateful when Grace reached over and dislodged his fingers.

  “Leave it,” Grace said sternly. “She wants to.”

  The pelt fell. The pain returned with a vengeance. My head now pounded like a gong being rung by a dozen drunk chimpanzees.

  And for once, my twin was right. I did want this.

  I nodded. Bastion hesitated, then left my pelt where it had fallen across his body.

  Relieved, I reached for returning agony as if it was a hand-quilted comforter, pulling it close around my sullied soul.

  “GET UP.”

  Hard hands pushed me off the edge of the bed and I didn’t manage to grab onto anything solid. I hit the ground butt-first—good thing my rear end is padded.

  “Whereza fire?” I slurred as I blinked open my eyes. Sun poured through the window, turning Justice into a silhouette. But I understood his head shake. As he turned away, I could imagine him rolling his eyes.

  No wonder he was pissed. It felt like only a few minutes had passed since I let unconsciousness salve my agony, but the sun’s position suggested I’d slept for most of the day. Behind me, Bastion was once again hunched under the covers, my pelt discarded. He must have soaked up every ounce of the energy I’d manage to store during my short time
in fur the previous night.

  Was it just my imagination, though, or did he seem to be sleeping more soundly than he had yesterday? That realization did more than an aspirin for melting away the pounding inside my skull.

  “There is no dog.” Grace prodded me with a pointed boot toe, reminding me that I couldn’t sit on the mildewed carpet forever.

  The floor slipped sideways as I tried to press myself up to standing. My hair frizzed across my face, blocking my view. I grabbed onto the side of the bed to balance myself while my balance spun like a tilt-a-whirl. “You know that how exactly?” I croaked.

  “Went through their garbage.” I raised my eyebrows and Grace flushed. “Justice went through their garbage,” she corrected herself. “No Alpo cans.”

  “So they feed it dry dog food.”

  “...and I dropped by to see the town dog catcher. Nobody from that address has ever applied for a dog license.” This time, Grace didn’t wait for my argument. “Yes, I know that’s private information. But I dressed to impress. He looked it up for me anyway.”

  I reached across the rumpled bedspread to regain my pelt. The fur was cold at first, but hairs warmed as I stroked them. Alertness unfurled inside my human skin.

  With returning clarity came the harsh reminder of reality. One week after each of our parents had started to decline, they’d faded away at midnight.

  My stomach clenched. That wouldn’t happen to Bastion. I wouldn’t let it.

  “Today’s day three,” I said aloud, running the back of my hand across Bastion’s forehead. Beads of sweat came away on my fingers, but he didn’t move beneath my ministrations.

  As best we could tell, being separated from our pelts only caused harm once someone started using the missing items. That same manipulation gave us a small window of opportunity when we could track down the stolen skin.

  Unlike with our parents, this time we’d been lucky. Proximity and youth meant Bastion had been able to point us in the direction of his stolen pelt before he became delirious.

  Unfortunately, he was no longer strong enough to narrow down the search window. Our luck was rapidly running out.

  Or maybe not. “Five hours until showtime,” Grace informed me, waving what appeared to be a newspaper clipping through the air in triumph. When I just stared in confusion, she deigned to elaborate.

  “Benefit party at the Smythewhites this evening.”

  It was time to create our own luck.

  Chapter 4

  Creating our own luck involved hours of bickering, shopping, and primping. Our already low coffers—and my patience—were running on empty by the time Grace was done.

  “Stop looking at the receipt.” My twin jerked up my chin none too gently. “Bastion is worth it.”

  He was worth it. And it was disloyal of me to think that Grace had bought more than she needed to feed her own fashionista itch.

  “We have to go,” I said instead of commenting on the clothes, shoes, and jewelry strewn across the bed Bastion wasn’t occupying. “The party started an hour ago.”

  “And we’re planning on arriving fashionably late.”

  Eventually, though, even Grace had to admit that there was very little left to be done to improve my appearance. The colored contacts she’d lent me made my eyes less startling, but I’d rubbed the edges raw in response to unfamiliar discomfort. My hair didn’t respond to her ministrations. And the dress I’d chosen for its ability to hide a dagger and zip ties would never be a fashion success.

  Grace, on the other hand, looked like she’d just stepped off a model’s runway. She spun in high heels, gazelle-like and elegant. I half expected Cinderella’s fairy godmother to swoop in and magic a pumpkin into a horse-drawn carriage to spirit her away to the ball.

  Instead, Justice cleared his throat from the open doorway. “Your ride is here. Go get ‘em, tiger.”

  He was speaking to his favorite cousin, my presence irrelevant. This stiffness and distance was what came of spending years separated from half of the pack that should have been as familiar as my own skin.

  Still, a tremor of excitement buzzed through me when Grace and I stepped out onto the landing together and peered down over the railing. In unison, our hands rose to clasp the jewelry at our throats.

  These matching necklaces, unlike the rest of our outfits, were twenty-year-old dime-store novelties. A single wolf paw broken in half, symbolizing our shared past.

  As one, our gazes slid to each others’ fingers, then our lips curved upward into identical smiles. It was almost as if we were fourteen again, united in the pursuit of mischief. We were...

  ...I flinched and Grace grinned as we caught sight of a limousine idling on the cracked pavement of the motel parking lot.

  “It’s overkill,” I accused.

  “It’s not,” she countered.

  Twenty minutes later when we were waved through the Smythewhites’ wrought-iron gate without being asked for our names or invitations, I had to admit: “You were right about the limousine.”

  The metal wolf paw was warm against my throat as Grace answered: “I’m always right.”

  We exited in a cloud of perfume that cost more than my favorite weapon. Cameras flashed while we strode through the double doors as if we owned the place.

  Inside, we slid into the crowd like fish through a current. Well, Grace was the fish. I was awkward and ungainly. As useful as a bicycle to a bass.

  Until, that is, someone got handsy with my sister. His fingers slid across her left butt cheek. She jumped, her exclamation overwhelmed by the hall’s roar of conversation.

  Amid so many people, there was no one else to notice. Good thing I’d worn my uncle’s gifted dagger.

  The blade slid out of its sheath and through the man’s silk shirt as fishlike as any of Grace’s movements. I doubted the pawer knew that his kidney was an inch beneath my dagger tip. He didn’t know that angling my dagger up, the blade would slice into his heart without getting bogged down by muscle and bone.

  Still, his face grew as maroon as that essential organ when I allowed the dagger’s tip to just barely pierce his skin. He might not know the specifics, but he definitely got the point.

  In reaction, that pesky hand jerked away from my sister like the bitter end of a broken fishing line. The man created a wave of moving bodies as he fled to the other side of the room.

  Grace didn’t even glance back at me before she surfed away on his wave’s ripples. She hadn’t noticed my rescue, but that didn’t matter.

  I fingered my necklace and I smiled.

  UNFORTUNATELY, EUPHORIA faded fast as I pushed deeper into the crush of people. Music and chatter, hors d’oeuvres and wine. Someone pressed a glass of bubbly into my fingers. Someone raised his eyebrows, asking me to dance.

  “No, thank you.” The man couldn’t make out my words, but he must have understood the shake of my head and the rejection in my posture. Shrugging, he turned around to repeat the invitation with somebody else.

  Which is when my skin prickled. Eyes bored into me. Predatory, hungry. I glanced up...and found the stranger from last night leaning against the banister of the staircase’s second-floor landing.

  Luke. When last we’d spoken, he’d been rumpled and disheveled. Now, he could have stood in for Grace’s Prince Charming.

  Perfect black tuxedo. Curls so much more defined than the shape my twin could tease mine into.

  Only his eyes were exactly the same. Piercing. Riveting. As if he had X-ray vision that cut through my body and into my soul.

  He was also blocking the exact direction in which I wanted to travel.

  Because no one would keep a woelfin’s pelt down here where any random party guest could spill caviar on it. A stranger might twist the fur around their neck as a stole—the way I currently wore my pelt—and carry it away.

  In contrast, the second story was the private portion of the residence, a safer place to store something precious. I needed to get up those stairs.

  But I
couldn’t head there directly. Not with Luke watching.

  I shivered. Sidestepped a waiter and three guests. Held my breath while I wound my way out of the atrium and into an interior hall.

  Only then was I able to think clearly enough to flesh out my plan. There had to be a back staircase. Somewhere out of the way and easy for servants to lug around mops and vacuum cleaners. Maybe situated in such a manner so food wouldn’t arrive cold if the mistress ordered breakfast in bed?

  A waiter with an empty tray excused himself as he walked past me. I followed at a distance until the music of the party transitioned into pots clanging beneath the billow of steam.

  The kitchen. And, just as I’d expected, a small, dingy door was nearly invisible beside the wider kitchen entrance.

  A servants’ stairwell. I reached forward—

  “Can I help you?” The interruption came in a clipped female voice.

  My hand slid off the door knob. Turning, I assessed the woman who had spoken with such ruthless authority.

  She was a high-level employee, I guessed. Just enough sparkle to her ears and throat so she could mingle, but not so much that anyone would mistake her for a guest.

  I couldn’t think of a single reason why she might let me wander up the back stairs and into the personal quarters of my host and hostess.

  “I...” I started, wishing Grace was here. My twin was the tale-spinner in the family. She could have charmed this woman so thoroughly we would have been granted a map of the premises.

  I, on the other hand, was better at brash and businesslike. My dress chafed under my armpits. Why didn’t it at least have sleeves?

  Strangely, my twitch of discomfort softened the woman’s expression. Helped her come to a conclusion I didn’t particularly care to understand.

  “He hired two tonight?” She shook her head, then stepped forward and opened the door for me. “Second room on the right at the top of the stairs.”

  “Thanks.” I didn’t await further instructions. Didn’t argue that I wasn’t a sex worker and had no clue who she thought was paying me. Instead, I took the stairs two at a time, rushing up and up and up.